


The Figure Skating Career of Lisa Snart

by laCommunarde



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Ice Skating, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-07-12 00:53:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7077793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laCommunarde/pseuds/laCommunarde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lisa Snart reflects on her ice skating career in her childhood and teens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Figure Skating Career of Lisa Snart

Lisa had become very aware early on that her brother and father were thieves. It was only later she came to fully appreciate that the reason her brother started stealing on his own was for her. Late at night for years after, she reviewed the fights between her Lenny and her father. They often started out with their father berating him about being good for nothing and an even worse thief. Lenny would often say that he was working on it, to which their father would respond that if Lenny was working on it, why did he never have anything to show for it. Lenny would sometimes fall silent, which occasionally ended the fight after their father shoved him around a bit. Sometimes, he would respond that he was using it to take care of him and her so their father did not have to. The second would invariably get their father mad enough to beat Lenny and throw things at him. Afterwards, Lenny would always sneak in to let her know he was okay (it wasn’t until years later she realized he was making sure she was okay) and stay there until she fell asleep. As she only understood years later, she had wanted to do ice-skating; therefore, he had started stealing and fencing enough to pay for the lessons and the round trip bus ride to the rink. After that realization, she dedicated all her ice-skating championships to him, even after she had a sponsor, and tried her absolute hardest to win them. 

Actually, she tried her hardest to win them even before she fully realized what her brother had done for her. He was there at every practice and every competition - even when it was too hot for him to be there as himself (as it was after this one job he had pulled in a city she had a competition in that somehow got traced back to him, that was apparently of some expensive artwork), she always identified his disguise in the crowd - and told her she could win; therefore she did, or at least metaled. 

After the first few lessons that involved a lot of falling on ice skates - some free skating thing to try to get local parents interested in registering their kids - she had fallen in love with the sport at the age of six. She could date it to when she had found out how to turn herself around and skate backward like the older kids were doing. Lenny had stopped skating and had pointed her out to the instructor with a big grin on his face. She had skated over to him, and he had introduced her to the instructor saying, "This is my sister." Then, in practice freeskate, he had held her hands while she had worked on all the skating she had learned that day, and had tried even more after watching the older figure skaters work on their moves. By the end of the sessions, she had gotten good enough that she was doing crossovers and lifting her leg behind her to figure out how to do a spiral. When the instructor had gone over to Lenny and explained that she was very good, that it would be a shame if she didn't keep it up, he had registered her on the spot. Later that day, he had grabbed a person's wallet, taken their cash and handed the wallet in to the supermarket counter as something he had found on the floor. 

By age seven and a half, she was trying out for her first competition. Lenny was utterly beside himself looking up skating costumes. He settled on something shimmery and gold and she ice skated to some classical music or other. She landed her first axle jump two weeks before and incorporated it into the routine. She landed that and finished with a spin. She won no hands down.

Her next competitive skate was to a song from Cats that she still had a week spot for that had been picked by her and Lenny – something about a mysterious thief cat. Her costume had been hand sewn to fit – after much flirting to get the costume and possibly an invitation to a blind date with the woman who gave it to them’s daughter for Lenny (Lisa never did get the full story out of him, but it involved much laughter on Mick’s part and that head ducking smile that meant her brother was blushing out of Lenny) – which much swearing and double checking a how-to-sew book he had taken out of the library on Lenny’s part. Mick - whom she hadn't been entirely sure what to do with until he had showed her how to make baked Alaska ice-cream and until he had knelt down in front of her one day and promised her he would never lose his temper at her ever - was watching in confused delight as the costume came together.

When she was almost nine, her father had found out about the ice skating competitions and how much Lenny was doing for them. The fight that ensured after that was the reason she and Lenny and Lenny's cast sat in the pro-bono lawyer's office explaining why Lenny, who could provide paperwork that he was working a steady job and and had a steady apartment (Mick's) and cared more for her wellbeing than Lewis did, should have custody. They won that case and she brought her stuffed pony Misty and her clothing and her iceskates over to Mick's two-bedroom apartment. He and Lenny moved in together and cleaned up the spare bedroom. She moved to professional skating and got a sponsor and a coach. But she still continued to dedicate every one of her competitions to Lenny.

For the early 90s, their father continued to get Lenny to do jobs with him by threatening him with telling the family court that Lenny and Mick were sleeping together. These conversations always went the same. Lenny would come home with his eyes red from holding back tears. Mick would say they could just burn Lewis. He would shake his head and go out on the job. She decided there was a better way to do something about it: there was an LGBT Awareness figure skating event, and when she was fourteen, she brought it up to Mick who listened and nodded. She enrolled the following day and invited Lenny and Mick. Then she dedicated her skating to her brother and his boyfriend. Lenny was shocked, but Mick was grinning. The family court judge thought they were the cutest. Lewis could no longer threaten Lenny with the court taking her away. They still did crimes, a little pickpocketing, a little art theft, a little ATM robbing, and a little black-market trading, but provided they stayed away from drugs and the mob - which they always did - they could avoid their father.

\--

When she was seventeen, though, Lewis worked up a new way to get Lenny and her to help him. He had taken pictures of them doing a job together and a lot of pictures of Mick starting little fires (that Lenny sure they always put out). And the job this time involved the mob and her next competition. it was the only time she's seen Lenny come home unable to loosen his fists and furious enough to kick a table across the room. Before he settled down in tears on the floor. As he hadn't yet said why he was angry, Lisa and Mick looked at each other in horror. Mick went over to gather Lenny into his arms. She went over to get the envelope he had dropped on the table before kicking it into the wall.

"He had someone trail us, from the Petrol job to now. Pictures, everything," Lenny began explaining. Lisa flipped through the photos. Faces, everything: it didn't look good. She nodded at Mick. 

"Unless we do what?" she asked.

He gestured, fingers fluttering in and out, before curling them into fists again. "Unless you fail the skating Nationals," he finally explained.

They all considered the information he had given them. On one hand, it would mean he would have them all arrested. On the other, it was the US Nationals, a once in a lifetime opportunity.

He slammed his feet down on the floor. "Damnit! Why did he have to get involved with the mob guy who has what's her face, your competition, as a girlfriend?"

Lenny gaze at her. She gazed and him, at Mick and at the evidence in her hand. It seemed pretty bad. She opened her mouth to say something.

"Fuck it," Lenny interrupted. "Fuck it. I'll take the fall. I'll tell him no. We won't do it."

"Lenny," Lisa warned.

"No, I'll take the fall. You two will get off with probation." He wiped his hand across his face and stood up.

"Lenny, think twice about what you're doing."

"I am. You owe it to yourself to do the best you can for this competition. And I'm not gonna let me or him stand in the way of that."

"Snart," Mick said, standing up as well. Lenny leaned against him then shoved him away.

He walked out the door. Mick met Lisa's eyes. Lisa closed her eyes and nodded.

\--

She fell out of the first jump, double-footed the second, and only did the first half of a triple-double jump she had planned at the end.

The evidence never did get processed.

Lenny didn't say a word for to her for three days. Then he walked out of his and Mick's room, gathered her into his arms, and just stood there for a while. "Let's bring him down," he whispered finally.

They did. It was a careful processing that involved getting a team together and having someone attach a camera to the buttonhole of his lucky shirt. They recorded hours of it - him dealing with the mob, him discussing past jobs, him doing jobs. They mailed it to CCPD, who called in their Vice Division. The entire upper echelon of two mob families was implicated. Lewis went away for fifteen years.

\--

When first Lenny then Mick talked to her about trying again for Nationals, she shook her head. She had already explained to her coach that she froze up and that she needed some time before she would try again. And she stored her skates on the top shelf in the back of the warehouse.

Lenny looked heartbroken and asked if it was because of their father. Lisa, Lenny and Mick all knew that was at least part of it. It was more than that though, and their father had only just pointed that out - anyone who wanted to, a journalist with a desire to bring someone down, could do what he had done and end them up in prison. And she wasn't willing to do that. She wasn't telling Lenny that though. Instead, she explained that it was time to concentrate on her schooling, that she had been good at math and science in school, and in the engineering course she was taking, she was enjoying herself.

They set about getting her into college and getting her every scholarship she was eligible for, which it turned out was a lot - first in her family to go to college for starters. She choose to go to a local college, completed her B.E. with honors in structural engineering in three years, and a new understanding of sleeplessness, and taught Lenny and Mick everything she learned and had both of them audit her classes on occasion - Lenny took better to the mechanical though he also liked electrical engineering, Mick liked chemical engineering which he would occasionally use to start fires without matches and then put them out. On getting out, they threw her a party at Sinners & Saints and ended the night planning an art heist. They pulled it off perfectly.

\--

After Mick informed her what her brother had done and after he tried to give her his cold gun, she had gone back to the ice skating rink of her childhood and wept until morning.

A child's voice interrupted her thoughts. “Ma’am, are you okay?”

She nearly jumped a mile but when she looked up at the sweet little girl holding skates and peering at her in concern, she dragged her hand across her face in the same way Lenny used to and nodded. “Yes, I will be. Someone very close to me has died.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” The little girl looked down at the floor. “You see, I thought you were my ice skating teacher. Me and the others,” she nodded at the ice rink where a bunch of children were waiting just inside the gate, “Our teacher must not have shown up. And my daddy always helped me lace up my skates, but he had a business trip. Do you know how to lace skate at all?”

Lisa nodded. “It’s been a while, but I will try. Sit.” The little girl did. “Okay. Now I always laced them like this.” And she began to lace up the little girl’s skates.

When she had finished the little girl hopped to her feet. “Thank you, Ma’am.” The children were still watching her from the gate, although some of them had stepped off the ice. “I’ll go find someone to tell about your teacher not showing up.”

She walked over to the window where rental skates were and peered inside. A teenager looked out with an expression she had seen many times. “Best not to drool,” she informed the boy, who slammed his mouth shut and looked embarrassed. “Now, it appears that one of the teachers didn’t come in today.” The teenager leaned out and they peered at the children.

“Ah. Umm. Are you a parent?”

“No. I used to skate here and came here because it was familiar.”

“I think that instructor had her baby this morning. At least that’s what I think her husband said. I handed the phone to the people in charge of the rink. And a lot of those kids - well, their neighborhood kids, their parents send them here to be out of the house for an hour.” He looked sheepishly at her then back at the kids. “I’ll call their parents, I guess.”

She looked back at him. “I used to be a neighborhood kid. Could I teach them for today? What level are they in?”

“Basic Two. Do you want a booklet of what they’re working on? Oh and can I hang onto some ID, just in case?”

She pulled out her ID – fake name and address but the boy seemed satisfied with it – and handed him her shoes.

“Here is a booklet of what they’re working on.”

“And you still give out gold stars to the kids who show up?”

He beamed at her and nodded and handed her a pair of skates. After the lesson, she went up to see if she could substitute teach for the season.


End file.
